Logan picked up his shoes and turned back toward the house. He decided he would make coffee so that Chase would sober up.
They had work to do.
ADNE DIDN’T WANT to resent the new Weaver, but she couldn’t help it. Mikaela had just begun to spin and twist when Shiloh sprang forward, tackling the girl.
Mikaela yelped as she hit the floor. Her silver skeins rolled across the room, well out of reach.
“Hold!” Tess was perched on the back of a chair, her feet resting in its seat. “Adne. Comments?”
Put me back on active duty, Adne thought, but said to Mikaela, “The task of the Weaver requires awareness and sensibility on multiple fronts. You’re focused on creating the door, but you can’t be oblivious to where you are and what’s happening around you.”
“Ethan? Connor?” Tess asked. The other two Strikers were watching with Adne from the side of the room. “Anything to add?”
“To be fair,” Connor said as he watched Shiloh help Mikaela up, “in the field she’d have Strikers protecting her, not attacking her.”
“That’s true. But the point of this session is that we don’t know what will happen in the field,” Tess corrected him. “Strikers always try to protect the Weavers, but Weavers must be able to defend themselves should the Strikers fall.”
Mikaela nodded, though she looked shaken as she went to collect her skeins.
Amateur, Adne thought, then chided herself for indulging such pettiness.
“Again.” Tess nodded to Shiloh.
Shiloh ducked behind one of several tall obstacles that had been placed around the room for this exercise. The lights were dimmed as well, allowing the Striker to move with stealth as Mikaela began to weave.
This time, Shiloh waited until Mikaela’s portal was nearly complete. He didn’t tackle the Weaver, but crept up behind. When he grabbed Mikaela, she screamed.
“Oh, please,” Adne muttered.
“Hey!” Connor shot her a questioning look, surprised by Adne’s harsh tone. “Go easy.”
Defensive, Adne whispered, “I don’t think she’s even trying.”
“Not everyone can be a wunderkind like you.” Connor tried to smile, but Adne could see that he was disappointed by her lack of compassion for the younger Weaver.
Mikaela faced Tess, looking crestfallen. “I’m sorry.”
“No apologies,” Tess replied. “That’s why we’re training. Don’t be too hard on yourself, Mikaela. It’s like this for everyone.”
Adne didn’t remember it being like this for her, but maybe she just wasn’t willing to admit that she’d been a novice once. She also couldn’t pin down why she felt such a visceral dislike for Mikaela. Adne could recognize the skill with which Mikaela wove portals despite her current inability to anticipate attacks. Though a slip of a girl, Mikaela moved with strength and purpose. Never hesitating, never losing the rhythm of her dance.
Mikaela began to weave again while Shiloh disappeared into the room’s shadows. Adne could see the source of the problem, and it was directly related to the grace of Mikaela’s weaving. Mikaela utterly closed herself off to the world as she pulled threads to create a door. Adne understood the allure of that technique. Opening a door to another part of the world was giving oneself over to the pulse of the earth itself. A Weaver touched something so much greater than the experience of an individual. Amid the dance, the Weaver knew infinite paths and innumerable places. All that existed was possibility. Adne knew nothing more beautiful. But if Mikaela wanted to sense an impending attack, she would have to stop giving in to that glorious abandon.
It was obvious Mikaela hadn’t put up any such barriers when Shiloh dropped from the rafters onto the Weaver’s shoulders.
“Take a breather, Mikaela,” Tess said. She turned to Adne. “Do you and Connor want to demonstrate? Maybe that would be helpful.”
“I’m game.” Connor glanced at Adne, lifting his eyebrows.
“Sure.” Adne drew her skeins, wondering if there was any chance that, should she perform well enough, Tess would just reinstate her as the Haldis Weaver.
“Ethan,” Tess said to the other Striker, “since Adne’s an old hand at this, why don’t you join in as well.”
When Adne looked at Tess with a frown, the Guide smiled at her. “You want a challenge, don’t you?”
Adne laughed, and felt a bit smug when she noticed Mikaela’s wide eyes upon her.
Ethan and Connor huddled up to plot Adne’s demise. She waited with her hands on her hips.
“Any time now,” Tess called out to the Strikers.
Connor gave Tess a thumbs-up, and he and Ethan dashed to their hiding places.
Adne was nearly ecstatic with anticipation. She hadn’t realized how hobbled she felt, having been taken off the team. She could still weave, but only with another Searcher looking over her shoulder. Though it was just for training, this was the first time since the night in the garden that Adne felt like herself. She was in her element and she was about to show Tess why this was exactly where she belonged.
“Go ahead, Adne,” Tess said.
Closing her eyes, Adne began to move. Her limbs bent and curved as her body dipped and turned. Though she wasn’t watching, Adne could feel the threads of light spooling out from the ends of her skeins. Seeing the pattern unfold wasn’t important; sensing the connections between the here and the there was everything.
Weaving was the means to an end, a way to travel in an instant from point A to point B, even if those two points were in opposite hemispheres. The magic of opening portals relied on pulling threads from many sites to create the path.
Everything was connected, one infinite pattern that Weavers tapped into. The fabric of the universe. But Adne had discovered she could do more.
Beyond weaving the door, Adne saw always the other potential paths she could create. The roads not taken. She caught glimpses of people and places she could reach. And she’d learned to hone her skill so that she knew how her immediate surroundings fed into those paths.
And with her eyes closed, she could see Ethan and Connor moving through the room, because the Strikers, like every living being on the planet, were threads in the world’s pattern. As they closed in on her, Adne sheathed her skeins.
Ethan came at her first. Side attack. He dove at Adne’s legs, hoping to knock her down. Adne propelled herself into the air, flipping over while Ethan sailed underneath her. Recovering from his miss, Ethan rolled onto the balls of his feet. The flicker of his gaze to a point just behind Adne gave Connor away.